Movie of the Week: The Dark Knight Rises

Wow, what can I say? One of the best movies I've seen this year and possibly the best of this trilogy because here we have a Batman, 8 years on from the last movie, who is utterly demoralised, having taken the rap for something he didn't do (in the last movie). He's broken, mentally and physically, but rises to the occasion anyway. It's not a question of sitting back to see how he creams the bad guys, instead there's a genuine fear that he won't succeed. This time he's up against someone bigger, tougher and trained by the same mentor and there's no get-out-of-jail-free card.

I like the way Bruce Wayne turns out to be very human. His body's taken a lot of punishment (no superpowers, remember) and all the cartilage in his joints is shot to hell and he's walking with a stick. He's used up and fighting his own body as well as the villains. Alfred's part in all this is almost unbearably poignant. Not usually a phrase I find I'm using in a review of a comic-book derived movie.

There are some good performances, not least from Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman as you might expect, but Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake and an almost unrecognisable Tom Conti in an excellent cameo role.

I do wish I'd taken the time to re-watch the first two Chris Nolan Batman movies and reminded myself of the plot intricacies as there are some loose ends tied off here and some plot strands that would work better with the other two movies loaded back into memory. It would certainly bear watching all three in order.

Bonus point. This movie is not in 3D. Yay!

Book Log 31/2012 - China Miéville: The City and the City

I really enjoyed this book, though it will take a little thinking about before I get it straight in my mind and could bear a second reading. It's a police procedural with a difference because the city of Besźel and the city of Ul Qoma occupy the same space, existing side by side yet separate as if they were on different continents. From birth the inhabitants of one city are schooled to 'unsee' what's happening in the other lest they invoke 'breach' and are spirited away by those who keep the boundaries sacred, never to return.

When Inspector Tyador Borlú of Besźel's Extreme Crime Squad finds himself investigating the death of an unidentified girl he doesn't realise that the very special nature of the place he lives and works in will impact on the crime enormously, taking him over the strange border, into the heart of the other city, and leading him to tangle with dangerous conspiracies beyond his wildest imaginings.

I'll be honest I didn't enjoy Miéville's 'Perdido Street Station', I thought it clever but lacking heart, however this book does have heart, in spades. Borlú is believable, well rounded and sympathetic main character, a dedicated cop, streetwise and dogged with a genuine desire to see justice done and a streak of anger directed at the villains. He enlists the help of Corwi, a young policewoman who has local knowledge and though she's a secondary character and we never get to see anything of her private life she's a young Borlú in the making, tough, dedicated and intuitive. Dhatt, Borlú's counterpart in Ul Qoma doesn't look too promising at first, but I warmed to him as Borlú did.

I still want to know more about the cities. Are they separated only by convention or is there a real physical boundary? There are districts which are purely Ul Qoma or purely Besźel but there are also areas which are crosshatched, where Besź and Ul Qoman buildings exist side by side (but never on top of each other) and traffic from the two cities share the same street, so drivers have to avoid vehicles from the other city while 'unseeing' them at the same time.

And then there's 'breach' – the folks who turn up from nowhere to apprehend transgressors – and who seem to obey no laws but their own.

A fascinating and layered story, highly recommended.